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One of my favorite features of Pro Writing Aid is the document summary, which lets me know overall, how good my grammar, spelling, and style is in that particular piece of writing. It’s a great overhead view of where I can improve. 

Then I thought, hmmm… I wonder how the greatest writers perform in this scoring system, after all, writing can be so subjective. I figured I should do a playoff bracket pitting some of the greatest writers and their most recognizable pieces of work against each other. 

I picked 16 great writers in the English language and plotted them into a bracket. One paragraph each, they will compete with each other to see which has the best overall score on Pro Writing Aid. The winner will move onto the next round. The loser will be eliminated. 

I define a paragraph as a series of connected sentences with a central idea or topic. Therefore, if the first paragraph is of dialogue, for example, and is quite short (three to five words), I can add on until the sequence of ideas are complete. Therefore, a paragraph in this competition can have more than one paragraph breaks in this interpretation. 

Take the first part of The Great Gatsby for example: 

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

This will count as one paragraph, because it’s a complete sequence. 

Now let’s get into the competition: 

Introducing the contestants! 

The 16 Great Writers: 

Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and The Sea

JD Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye

F Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

George Orwell – 1984

Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway

Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice 

Stephen King – The Stand

Mark Twain – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Charles Dickens – Great Expectations

John Steinbeck – The Grapes of Wrath 

JRR Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings

George RR Martin – Game of Thrones

JK Rowling – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Kurt Vonnegut – Slaughter House Five

Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray

Who will win? 

Watch the video here to find out. 

For more videos on writing, editing and the creative process, check out my YouTube channel.